Dumpster diving

This is what Bill Murray did on Letterman last night. That’s another thing about Letterman over Leno. Cool people prefer Letterman.Bill Murray definitely prefers Letterman. Bill Murray would probably dive into a dumpster for reals before giving Leno any more love than necessary. And Bill went back to Letterman last night to promote Get Low and to also test out Dave’s new dumpster pool. The goggles. It’s all in the details, right?

Since I posted about Bill Murray the other day, a few of you who’ve been lucky enough to have Bill Murray encounters have emailed with your favourite Bill moments. One of my favourites of these was Karolina’s encounter with him at SXSW this year. A shortened version of her story is below: We went to Austin, Texas for SXSW and while it seems everyone and their mother has a Bill Murray sighting to talk about from the festival, I’d like to think ours is one of the best of the bunch. It started at a show for this California band called the Growlers; this amazing psychedelic beach goth band. While in the middle of dancing to their set front row and centre, one of my friend nugdges me to turn around and check out who’s moshing behind us. It was Bill Murray!

Fast forward to a few days later. On the last day of our trip, when the festival was officially over, one of my best friends got a text from a girl in the band The Like inviting us to see them play at a small house party in the outskirts of Austin. We get to this house party full of kids in their mid-to-late 20s and it’s a pretty small crowd; about 30-40 close friends of the guys who lived in the house and friends of the band. We’re hanging out, meeting new friends, enjoying everyone’s company when at one point I turn to look towards the direction of the kitchen (the house was teeny with the living room and kitchen all one open space) and I CANT BELIEVE MY EYES. There, at the kitchen sink, washing a dish, is Bill Murray!!!! At a house party. With about 30 people. Every single person played it completely cool and my friends and I weren’t sure if it was because they all knew him, or we were on some hidden camera or what the heck was going on but sure enough as soon as we walked out to the backyard people were chit chatting away also in amazement. He came back out and offered us delicious vegan pasta. When the band started playing, we walked in to see them and Bill joined in on tambourine! And still, everyone played cool and hardly anyone took photos, UNTIL the police showed up and all bets came off. I think they received a noise complaint from a neighbour and came to check it out. Totally didn’t believe the boys who lived in the house that Bill Murray was inside but came inside reluctantly and when they saw Bill Murray playing with the band, their face expressions were PRICELESS!

The police showing up kind of broke the ice between Bill and umm…EVERYONE and as soon as the band stopped playing everyone went up to him. He actually came up to my friends and I and asked for our names and chatted with him. I remembered an article that referenced how he remembers every single person’s name that he meets. Well after we chatted for sometime, we went away for a while did our own thing and a much later in the night he had come over to us again introducing us to a neighbour of the boys’ whos house it was. Remembered our names exactly perfectly (we all have semi unique names and no one ever pronounces mine properly). And one last thing to add the the whole randomness of this all, turns out that Bill Murray was in town for the film fest portion of the festival, met the girls of The Like in their hotel lobby and asked to hang out with them…

Dude, imagine going to a house party and Bill Murray offers you vegan pasta? This would make my life. And the way it all happens too. Because he just walked up to the band and asked if he could roll with them. Then again, if he wasn’t Bill Murray and just some weird 60 year old man, would it still be cool?

Here’s video from that night. Yep, there he is. Just sitting there playing tambourine.